


can't escape from you

by vtforpedro



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Dark Original Percival Graves, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mary Lou Barebone is Her Own Warning, POV Credence Barebone, Rough Sex, Stalking, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Relationships, Vampire Bites, Vampire Hunters, Vampire Original Percival Graves, Vampire Turning, because of, vampire allure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:15:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27729376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtforpedro/pseuds/vtforpedro
Summary: In which Credence Barebone and his family are vampire hunters, a life Credence is tired of living, and a vampire that he once drove a stake through may just offer him a way to escape.
Relationships: Credence Barebone/Original Percival Graves
Comments: 14
Kudos: 59





	can't escape from you

**Author's Note:**

> ***PLEASE heed the tags.***

Vampires.  
  
Credence has known very little else in his life. He vaguely remembers that his mother used to talk about witches when he was young, younger than seven or eight. He didn’t understand then, didn’t understand where witches were or why his mother despised them.  
  
At some point her hatred shifted toward the more supernatural. Vampires and how they were perhaps the result of strange murders and other bizarre goings-on in New York City. That maybe it was never witches at all, but always immortal beings that had a taste for human blood.  
  
He remembers meeting with strange people when he was a child who told his mother even stranger things. But she believed them, she did what she was told to ward them off, and she eventually began asking how to kill them.  
  
When Credence was thirteen years old, he realized the extent to which his mother’s obsession went. It was all she spoke of, all their lives were centered around. He didn’t go to school, his mother homeschooling him, but they were hardly math or science lessons.  
  
He learned how to hunt vampires. So did his sister, Chastity, when he was fifteen. She was only eight and their youngest sister was one years old and Credence began to get the impression that his mother had children so she could raise them to kill witches and vampires rather than for any other reason. Certainly not out of love.  
  
There was never any proof of vampires. Strange killings and other things in the city, but it was New York City, where strange things happen. He doubted his mother more every year and planned to escape at eighteen.  
  
When he was seventeen and his mother took Credence out to a deserted farmhouse where supposed vampires lived, he experienced a rude awakening.  
  
Seeing someone feasting on another person’s blood was horrifying and he tried to convince himself that this was only another strange thing, that a regular person had something wrong with them, but he’d seen the fangs. And when his mother plunged a wooden stake into the man’s chest, Credence watched him turn to ash.  
  
His mother shook him by the shoulders that night and told him she knew he doubted her. She made him swear to never doubt her again or he would feel pain like he’d never had before. She was right and he would always be wrong and he had to believe and trust her or he’d face more hurt.  
  
Pain, something she liked inflicting on just about everyone. She used corporal punishment on her children, especially him, and he’s got the scars to prove it. It slowed by the time he was seventeen, when he was taller than her finally and when he told her to stop or he would make her stop.  
  
He’s twenty-eight now. She still slaps him and she still takes the belt to him sometimes, when he’s particularly vulnerable and doesn’t have the energy or courage to stop it. It’s humiliating and he knows he’s rotted away inside, but each time she leaves a new mark on his body, he thinks he loses more of his soul.  
  
Ma likes to tell him he has no soul but Credence thinks she’s wrong. He loves in the way she doesn’t. He loves his sisters, he loves many things, like the way clouds look when the sun is rising and he loves the trees in Central Park, walking under them and listening to the wind rustling their leaves.  
  
He loves reading whatever he can get his hands on and often spends his days in the library, away from Ma and away from vampires.  
  
They go out nearly every night and most of the time they find nothing. Sometimes they find traces, sometimes they find blood and no body before the police find the scene. Sometimes they find vampires and on those nights they fight for their lives and win, whether by watching them flee or by killing them. Watching an immortal being turn to ash, never to roam the earth again, never to hurt or turn anyone again.  
  
Credence doesn’t get much satisfaction out of what they do. He is glad to stop a dangerous creature from killing innocent people, yes, but he would choose for his life to be something else, if he could.  
  
His mother keeps him trapped, telling him he is too stupid and has no skills for the real world and that he has no money to go anywhere but the streets. He believed her for a very long time.  
  
A very, very long time.  
  
Credence, Chastity and Modesty have all killed numerous vampires by now. They’re known in those types of circles, _the Barebones,_ vampire hunters to be feared. They move often for fear of retaliation but on the occasions that a vampire hunts them down, they’ve won those fights too.  
  
Ma relishes in this life. She says God will reward her in ways he’s rewarded no one else. She says she is a vessel of his, put on this earth to do good and to teach others how to do good in the way of killing the unnatural. She is obsessed with vampires, with reading lore on them from nearly every country in the world, to meeting with others who do the same as them. She speaks of little else and their lives are entangled with the supernatural so much that Credence truly does believe he is stuck.  
  
He is not stupid, he is not skilless, and he may have no money to his name, but his face is as known as hers to vampires and that’s the biggest problem. He doesn’t think he could leave and ever live a normal life, even if he left New York or America entirely.  
  
They know his face as much as he knows theirs because vampires research them too and are always on the lookout.  
  
Credence wants to stop this. He wants this to be over for him and his sisters. Chastity relishes in this life as much as their mother these days and he tries to talk her out of it, but she often tells their mother if he does and he faces punishment.  
  
Modesty is barely fourteen and she is good at this too, but she shares Credence’s view on things. She wants to be normal as much as he does. She wants to have friends, wants to go to school, wants to have a life eventually away from their mother.  
  
Credence promises her he’ll try to find a way for them both.  
  
And then Percival Graves walks into their lives.  
  
They start hearing his name in their circles and the hushed whispers of it are unlike the way other hunters usually speak of vampires. They say he’s one of the oldest they’ve ever seen and he is simply too good at what he does to be killed. Too fast, too powerful, too strong.  
  
He comes to New York City, they say, when the generations of older vampire hunters have died out and he’s more myth than legend. He comes back because he loves the city, he loves the hunting grounds, and he only leaves when he’s had his fill and hunters track him day and night.  
  
One of them tells Credence that he hopes they never find him because he’ll only kill them, another body to add to his count, another body to rip apart or, if he senses strength, another body to raise from the dead.  
  
It’s terrifying, just the mere idea of him, and Credence wonders sometimes if he is real. He wants to believe he isn’t, wants to believe he’s only a myth, but Credence has never been lucky in his life.  
  
His mother’s obsession with vampires only increases. She swears she will be the one to do it, she will find him and end his reign of terror, and despite their success in what they do, she’s laughed out of meetings.  
  
Credence is tired of this life. Tired of what he knows his mother will do. Hunt endlessly, keep them away from home and under the moonlight, when it’s the most dangerous for them. Modesty is a spunky fourteen year old, Chastity is twenty-one and has become a beautiful young lady, and he wishes it was different. He wishes he could take pride in his family, but he can’t. Nothing about them makes him proud.  
  
Nothing about himself makes him proud either.  
  
But they hunt Percival Graves, day and night, sometimes with other hunters but mostly not. They follow the trail he leaves behind, messier and more obvious than other vampires, and Credence has no choice but to believe he’s real. There are fewer bodies to find, which means he turns many of them, letting fledgling vampires loose into the city to wreak havoc.  
  
They’re never been so busy and Credence is immensely exhausted all the time, for far more than one reason.  
  
One night, in early April, they follow a lead to Upstate New York, to an old Victorian home that’s in shambles. There are some vampires that work with hunters to keep their lives and they don’t like when an older vampire comes through and changes things, making times more dangerous for them.  
  
They tell them where to go and Ma takes them there.  
  
And they find him.  
  
Credence remembers it all so vividly.  
  
He’s there and so are a few young vampires and Credence sees him and feels an immense fear, unlike anything he’s felt before.  
  
Percival Graves is a handsome man, pale skin, dark hair and dark, intense eyes. Confidence is in every inch of him and his black three-piece suit and clean appearance somehow make him more frightening.  
  
He’s faster than any vampire they’ve come across and Chastity and Modesty fight the others while Ma and Credence worry about him. He manages to put five claw marks deep into Ma’s back and though Credence does not love his mother, _cannot_ love her, he feels rage.  
  
She’ll live but she’ll have extensive scarring and maybe Credence should feel some vengeance fulfilled for that, but he doesn’t.  
  
It could have been Modesty or Chastity.  
  
Percival Graves stalks him and says things, taunts him, for his appearance, for the fear in his heart that pumps into his blood. He mocks his life, tells Credence what he craves, as if he can read his mind.  
  
Tells Credence he can smell it on him, all of his desires, and tries to tell Credence he can give him a better life.  
  
They do that sometimes and Credence, frightened more than he ever has been, realizes that Percival Graves is just another vampire. And when Percival Graves senses that he’s lost some of his fear, he goes on the offensive.  
  
The inhuman black void of his eyes, his fangs, longer and sharper than he’s seen on any others, get closer to Credence than he’d ever like. He earns a few claw marks himself, on his arms and shoulders and one that could have gutted him if he’d been any closer.  
  
Modesty is there before they both know it and she leaps on his back and presses a cross against his neck and when it burns and he hisses, distracted by it, Credence plunges a stake into his heart.  
  
His eyes fade to brown and he looks at Credence, some sort of shock in them as his skin cracks and he begins to turn to ash. The fear fades then, replaced by something else, something that burns, and the last thing Credence sees is a smile on his lips before he’s gone.  
  
Credence sits on the bus heading toward school and remembers the fight that night. Six months ago now and he remembers every detail like it occurred only the night before. He relives it often, smells the blood and the ash and feels the pain.  
  
He wears long-sleeved shirts wherever he goes now. And lately, where he’s been going is a community college. Because he’d told Ma that _he_ killed Percival Graves, an eight hundred year old vampire, when no one else had and he was going to do something for himself. That he deserved something for it.  
  
He hasn’t left home and he still hunts with them, that won’t change until Credence can figure out how to get away, but he takes basic starting classes at the college so he can earn some sort of degree that would get him a job and enough money to leave.  
  
If Modesty is eighteen by then, he’ll take her with him.  
  
Credence stares out of the window of the bus and watches taxis pass them by and watches crowds of people walking on the streets. He has headphones on, an old pair that’s on its last leg, but he can’t afford the AirPods everyone else seems to have these days.  
  
The bus stops and Credence gets up, pulling his backpack on and walking off of it. He moves to the street corner to wait to cross and looks directly across it.  
  
A man in a black three-piece suit looks back. With dark hair, dark eyes, intensely focused, pale skin and a smile that’s familiar.  
  
Credence’s entire body tenses as adrenaline floods his veins. Before he can think, think of anything he can do, another bus passes him and the man in the black suit is no longer there.  
  
Stress. It’s stress, he thinks frantically.  
  
He’s been under an incredible amount of it his entire life, but especially so now, with hunting and classes and his mother belittling him for wanting more than she's given him. For not being grateful that she’s made him the way he is.  
  
When he’d asked if she meant the abnormal freak he is, she’d slapped him, but it had been satisfying for a brief moment.  
  
Credence shakes himself and decides he imagined it. Imagined him. Because he’s dead, ash long gone from the earth, and Credence has seen things like this before. Flashes of faces he knows no longer exist because he’d put a stake through their heart.  
  
He thinks it’s because they were human once and despite what they are then, when he kills them, he is still taking a life that once loved, that once had family and friends, that was normal once upon a time.  
  
He tries not to think about those things. Tries to convince himself that they were never normal, that they were murderers before he met them as vampires. That they were never good people.  
  
It helps him sleep better at night, but only a little.  
  
Credence goes to his classes and goes home after to work on homework. When they hunt that night, it’s a normal hunt, nothing exciting, and he tells himself that there will never be a hunt like that one six months ago.  
  
He’s dead and gone and will be forever.  
  
Five days later, Credence is sitting in the library near a window, writing an essay with the laptop he’d been able to buy with what little money he managed to save for over six months. The trees outside are pretty, orange and red and yellow leaves, a dash of color against the grey skies. The glass is slightly warped, probably to keep students from getting distracted, Credence thinks wryly.  
  
He pauses in his writing and looks anyway, smiling faintly as he looks at the grass steadily yellowing as winter approaches. A few students walk past the window and Credence sees a man directly across the yard from him. He’s wearing a black suit and leaning against a tree, his arms crossed over his chest.  
  
Credence’s heart leaps and he stands abruptly, his chair screeching loudly on the hardwood floors and scaring about seven students near him.  
  
“Sorry,” Credence says breathlessly when they gasp, looking back at them, before he looks quickly out at the trees.  
  
No one is there.  
  
Credence is breathing deeply, a cold sweat broken out across his forehead and palms and the old scars, still fading from red to white on his body scream in pain, like they were only just inflicted. Sometimes they ache still, but not like this.  
  
He gathers his things and leaves the library, feeling the eyes of his fellow students on his back, but he can’t exactly explain. He’s terrified to step outside, to leave, but he manages to make it to the bus stop and home without another sighting.  
  
For a moment Credence thinks he should tell his mother, but he banishes that thought as quickly as it had come. He can’t tell her. She’ll become so obsessed it’ll border on hysteria and she will ruin her children more than she has already.  
  
He’s seeing things. The stress of his life is doing this to him and he reminds himself that he occasionally sees a face in the crowd that looks like a vampire he killed, but never is, in the end.  
  
The man he’s seen is a figment of his imagination, influenced by extreme stress and exhaustion. It makes sense to him and he’d try to get help if he could, but Ma would never stand for it. She can’t risk the general public knowing what they do because she fears being put in a hospital. She fears for herself, not her children, and Credence feels the same bitterness he’s always felt for that fact.  
  
He doesn’t tell Modesty either. He keeps it to himself and he’s glad for it, because he doesn’t see anything strange for two weeks.  
  
Credence has been trying to get more sleep, to drink more water and do things that are more pleasant for him, rather than focusing solely on school and hunting.  
  
It’s helping, he thinks, because he doesn’t look quite as pale. His eyes aren’t so sunken in anymore and they have a bit of life to them. He is always tired, always fatigued, but it lasts for a shorter period of time through his days.  
  
Even Modesty tells him she likes seeing him feeling better because she knows he hasn’t felt good for her entire life.  
  
That stings, but what can he say about it?  
  
Ma sends him out on Saturday afternoon for groceries and Credence is happy to get out of the house. He gets what’s on the list and adds a little more fruit and vegetables than she asked for. She says it’s too expensive but Credence thinks they’re all probably malnourished in some way and he has a little money to cover it.  
  
He walks to the bus stop after and halfway there, he feels the ghost of fingers on the back of his neck and what sounds like his name carried on a breeze. He flinches so badly he drops the bags and turns wildly around in a circle.  
  
There is no one there, but the hair on his neck and arms is standing on end and he thinks he hears a chuckle in the air, low and quiet, and presses his hands against his ears. He squeezes his eyes shut, his heart slamming against his ribcage, and it’s only when he’s taken in a few deep breaths that he dares to look around.  
  
Some people are frowning at him and two are helping put any loose groceries back in his bags and he sheepishly hastens to help them. They ask him if he’s alright, tell him he looks pale and might need to see a doctor, but he only thanks them profusely and hurries away, as quickly as he can.  
  
When he gets home, Ma is angry at him for the extra fruits and vegetables and he forgets to tell her he paid for them and takes the punishment.  
  
It doesn’t hurt as much as the claw marks on his arms and shoulders, on his abdomen. He looks at them later, while he’s in the bathroom, expecting to see blood, but they don’t look any different. Still pink fading to white, but they’ll always look ugly, the way they serrated his skin in a way no stitches could fix. He tentatively touches the one on his shoulder and sees a flash of a Victorian house and the ghost of a smile on ashy lips and yanks his hand away.  
  
Credence grips the sink and breathes in deeply and wonders if he’s losing his mind. From stress, yes, not from anything else.  
  
Percival Graves is dead and gone and it’s been six months. There have been no signs of a powerful vampire in the city, not as powerful and destructive as him. No more young vampires being turned at an alarming rate.  
  
But when he tries to sleep that night, he finds it’s nearly impossible. He hears that voice, low and demanding, his chuckle, husky on the air, feels the way his eyes had burned into Credence’s. Feels the ghost of his fingers across the nape of his neck.  
  
He sees him standing under autumn leaves and across a busy street, staring at Credence and only him in a crowd of many.  
  
Credence sleeps very little and his dreams are disturbing, filled with blood and fangs buried in his neck and the stench of death permeating the air.  
  
It begins to take a toll on him, more than anything else has.  
  
He sees a dark suit and a piercing gaze when he’s in class and looks out of the windows. He sees pale skin and a familiar smile when he’s taking a walk through Central Park, but he always blinks and it’s gone.  
  
He’s gone.  
  
Credence looks out of his bedroom window one night, out onto the quiet street of their run down neighborhood, and sees a man dressed in black sitting on the stoop of the house across from theirs, lit only by a streetlamp nearby.  
  
He stares, his heart beating so hard it hurts, and when the man lifts his hand, as if in greeting, he squeezes his eyes shut until he sees flashes of light and opens them again.  
  
He’s gone, the way he always is.  
  
Credence is becoming jumpy and frightened of the smallest noises, of the smallest feelings. The presence of someone he can’t see, like on the other side of a bookshelf in the library or an aisle in the grocery store. Someone sitting behind him on the bus.  
  
There is never anyone there. Not anyone he is frightened of.  
  
When someone speaks to him unexpectedly, in class, or a friendly retail worker at a store, Credence flinches before he can help it. They seem perturbed by him and he apologizes and blames college courses, which seems to relax most people.  
  
He’s losing sleep because he is afraid to sleep. He dreams every night of cool hands and a stinging bite in his neck, whispered words in his ear that should terrify him, but don’t in his dreams. Sometimes those cool hands become warmer and so does the mouth on his neck and Credence wakes up in a state that simultaneously embarrasses him and pisses him off.  
  
He needs therapy. Or something. Maybe he can tell a therapist he had a violent encounter with an ex and now he sees him everywhere and they can tell him what he should do to make things stop.  
  
But Credence can’t afford a therapist and Ma might actually kill him if he went to one anyway.  
  
He’s close to tears for most of his days and he’s falling behind in his classes from his lack of sleep. His tendency to fall asleep in class and in the library don’t help because he has uncomfortable dreams in the general public and people are beginning to look at him oddly wherever he goes on campus.  
  
Any healing he did is gone now.  
  
Dropping out is starting to look like a good idea, but he desperately wants this for himself, doesn’t fucking want vampire hunting ruining him more than it already has.  
  
In mid-November, after over a month of this, Ma sends him to get groceries and he idly thinks about flinging himself off the Brooklyn Bridge while he’s out.  
  
He’s so exhausted and he desperately needs a break. A break from this life, from New York City, from everything.  
  
Credence walks the aisles of the grocery store and stops in front of the canned vegetables. He stares at them, not really seeing them for a long while before he reaches out and grabs one. It’s sweet corn, he realizes, and he blinks blearily down at it and can’t recall if he’s ever eaten it before or if it’s something he eats regularly and if Ma has it on her list.  
  
“Sweet corn niblets in a can. That must be the least appetizing thing I’ve ever heard of.”  
  
Credence flinches violently and looks wildly around. The can falls from his hands and he gasps, quickly backing into the shelves with a yelp of both shock and pain, because there is a man standing only a few feet behind him.  
  
A man in a black three-piece suit, with immaculately styled dark hair and an intense, piercing gaze. His eyes are brown and he’s smirking, just a little. His skin is pale, as pale as Credence’s, which makes the black stand out all the more.  
  
Numerous cans fall from the shelves, clattering loudly below, and neither of them move. Credence’s heart feels like it may give out, or he might simply just faint.  
  
Percival Graves watches him like he’s a curiosity, his head slightly tilted as he looks over Credence’s face. His eyes move up and down along his body too and Credence has the impression he’s thinking how he’d best like to murder him.  
  
A few people are glancing down the aisle from the noise, Credence can see from his peripheral, and Graves merely smiles at them and raises his hand and Credence thinks he says _just an accident,_ but blood is rushing through his ears.  
  
He swallows and Graves looks at him again, follows the movement of his throat. Or maybe he can see the way his pulse is pounding there.  
  
“Not even a hello?” he asks, the same smile on his face that was Credence’s last image of him and which has haunted him for over six months.  
  
Credence is sweating, beads of it on his forehead and he can feel it on his lower back. His coat feels too hot suddenly and he’s not sure he’s ever been so terrified in his life.  
  
“You’re supposed to be dead,” he manages weakly.  
  
Graves smiles more and steps closer and there’s nowhere Credence can go. “The thing about killing a hydra, Credence, is that it only comes back stronger.”  
  
“Vampires don’t come back,” Credence says, his voice trembling. “They don’t. They never have.”  
  
“How do you know they never have?” Graves asks with a smile. “How do you know there aren’t others out there, more powerful each time they rise again when someone like you puts a stake through their heart?”  
  
Credence doesn’t want to believe him. Doesn’t want to believe there are vampires so old and powerful that they can come back even stronger. It’s a frightening thought and he thinks he must have simply done it wrong. He’d watched Graves turn to ash and he was nothing more than that, but he had to have done it wrong.  
  
Graves moves closer to him, into his space, and his eyes are so dark, the brown almost completely black.  
  
“You’re so terrified, Credence,” he says softly and touches Credence’s hip. He smiles when Credence flinches. “You look like you haven’t been sleeping well.”  
  
Credence blinks a few times, trying to blink Graves out of existence. “College, you know,” he manages to say breathlessly. “Keeps me up late.”  
  
Graves chuckles and his eyes are on Credence’s neck again. “I hope that’s all it is. You look haunted by something,” he says and meets Credence’s eyes. When Credence winces, he smiles. “They hurt still, don’t they? The ones on your arms and shoulders? Your stomach? It’s hard to get rid of that sting.”  
  
Credence whimpers and tries to pull his head back when Graves leans closer. He thinks someone must see this, someone must see this happening, a shopper or someone watching the cameras, but it’s so quiet and it feels like time has stopped.  
  
“The fear in your blood,” Graves says and his other hand is suddenly on Credence’s neck, tilting it. “You have no idea how enticing you smell.”  
  
For a moment Credence thinks he’s about to be bitten, right here in the canned vegetable aisle, drained of blood or turned, and he nearly cries out for help, but it feels like his voice has abandoned him as much as everything else has.  
  
“Please don’t,” he finally manages to whisper, when he feels Graves’ breath on his neck.  
  
Graves pulls back, to Credence’s surprise, though he doesn’t go far. He’s right here, too close, looking into Credence’s eyes. “Only because you said please,” he says softly. “Get some sleep, sweetheart. I hate to see you this way.”  
  
Credence blinks and inhales sharply.  
  
He’s gone.  
  
Just like that, he’s gone, the way he’s been gone all the other times. All the other times he was truly there, not a hallucination, and Credence has never seen a vampire that can do this.  
  
Graves says he’s more powerful each time he’s raised and Credence is inclined to believe it.  
  
He’s trembling like a leaf and looks around finally. There’s no one in the aisle and the lights seem darker than usual. But they flicker back brighter and he hears other voices, sees shoppers walking by the aisle, and tries not to think about that being a power of Graves’ too.  
  
Credence looks at the cans that fell around him, none broken, and leans down to pick them up. It’s difficult because his hands are shaking so badly, but he manages it.  
  
He wants to leave. Forget the shopping, go home and tell his mother and sisters that Graves is back, but he knows what will happen if he does. Life will be far worse for his sisters, for him, and if they were to fight him again, they might not win.  
  
So Credence does the rest of the shopping. He half expects to turn down an aisle and see Graves there, but the oppressive feeling in the air is gone and Credence thinks he is as well.  
  
He goes home with no extra groceries and goes straight to his room afterward. He sits on his bed and pulls his knees to his chest and glances out of the window. He thinks he’ll see him again, but he’s not on the street or his neighbor’s stoop. Credence stares out at the trees, grey and bare now, and doesn’t know what is going to happen next.  
  
For a moment, a small moment, he hopes that Graves finds him and kills him. It would end his miserable life and he wouldn’t have to live like this anymore. But that would leave his sisters alone with his mother and he can’t do that to them.  
  
But there is no desire in him to track down Percival Graves and sink another stake into his heart.  
  
Even though Credence knows he hasn’t seen the last of him.  
  
——  
  
If Credence thought he was jumpy before, he’s learning that was only mild distress he was under.  
  
Any time anyone speaks to him that he doesn’t see at first sends him about a foot into the air and there’s no real excuse for that as college stress. Most people simply stutter and apologize and walk swiftly away.  
  
His mother and sisters are another story. Modesty has always had a habit of moving like a ghost through the various houses they’re in and even though she’s a gangly fourteen year old now, she is still as quiet as she’s always been and on a few occasions, she’s scared the absolute shit out of him.  
  
She asks what’s wrong with him, alarm in her eyes each time, and he tells her it’s college because he thinks she’s young enough to believe him. The way she frowns at him tells him otherwise, but he can’t say it. He absolutely cannot tell anyone.  
  
Credence is starting to not want to leave his home. But he knows that Graves knows where he lives, he’d waved at him at the window, for Christ’s sake, so it doesn’t particularly feel safe anymore either. But outside means the possibility of being snuck up on, of being killed or turned or whatever it is that Graves wants to do with him.  
  
He’s taunting Credence for killing him, he knows that much, and he doesn’t get any extra sleep. He loses more of it, in fact, until he starts to feel like he’s constantly on the edge of his seat, waiting for something terrible to happen.  
  
But if Graves isn’t going to kill him immediately, he might as well go to class so he doesn’t have to potentially be beaten by his mother either, whenever she decides he’s done something wrong. He tries to pretend things are normal, no matter how wired and taut his body always is, leaving his muscles sore by the time he’s in bed. Or how frantic his thoughts are, leaving him exhausted and yet unable to sleep for longer than a couple hours at a time.  
  
Credence looks for him when he takes the bus to school. He looks for him when he’s in the library, he especially looks for him when grocery shopping. He reads the paper, one of four his mother gets to look for vampiric activity, and sees nothing that stands out, not the way it did before.  
  
He’s starting to feel like Graves is here for him, not to do what he did to New York over six months ago. At least not yet and Credence hopes he doesn’t start up because then everyone would know he was back and Ma would insist on killing him again, like it’d be even easier, without knowing it might be impossible.  
  
Credence is a mess.  
  
He’s an absolute mess and if he doesn’t crack the next time someone unexpectedly says his name he thinks it’ll be a miracle.  
  
Friday is free of classes and hunting won’t be until late in the evening, so Credence takes the day for himself. He grabs a book, his thickest coat and his favorite blanket, as threadbare as it is, and takes a taxi to Central Park.  
  
It’s cold but the sun is up and there are no clouds in the sky. A perfect day for scaring away vampires. Normal ones, anyhow, and he tries not to think about the abnormal ones. He walks through the park once he’s there and finds a tree to sit under, laying out his blanket and bundling up in his coat. Maybe he can scrounge enough to buy himself a nice pair of mittens so his fingers don’t freeze, but it’s nice enough for now.  
  
Birds flutter from bare branch to bare branch above him, twittering, and someone jogging with their dog passes by on the path next to him. It smells fresh in here despite everything going dormant and it’s a calm Credence has forgotten actually exists in the last month and a half.  
  
He could fall asleep here.  
  
But then someone might steal his book and blanket or scare him so much he comes up swinging, which he thinks is an entirely possible scenario lately.  
  
Credence gets about four pages in before he falls asleep.  
  
It’s not theft or anything startling that wakes him, but something warmer, over his hands, over his legs and he blinks blearily. He looks over the blanket that’s definitely not his, warm and thick and almost unbearably soft draped over him.  
  
Credence thinks he might still be asleep but he looks to his left and sees a pair of pristinely shined oxfords and his heart sinks. He looks up and Percival Graves stands over him, smirking, and Credence is entirely ready to come up swinging.  
  
“Ah, ah,” Graves says when Credence tries to flail out of his blankets. “None of that now.”  
  
Credence stills and his body sags like all the fight has left him in a sudden rush, even as his heart pounds and his stomach is tight with nerves, making him feel ill. It takes him a moment of staring at Graves before he realizes what this is.  
  
The so-called vampiric lure and Credence supposes that’s a good enough word for it. It’s been used on him countless times but Ma made sure to teach him and his sisters early on how to break out of it. He tries then, the way he knows how, and it’s a solid brick wall he hits.  
  
He feels like he’s trapped in a room that’s warm, pleasant, calming and comfortable, but with no way out.  
  
Graves kneels next to him, too close, and touches Credence’s jaw. His touch is cool but not enough for Credence to move away from it. He tilts Credence’s head back and forth, like he’s looking for something and Credence can’t fathom what.  
  
He leans into the touch and he knows he’s doing it, knows he doesn’t want to, but everything that is Percival Graves is intoxicating at this moment.  
  
“I suppose this is my own fault,” Graves says, but he sounds amused. “You’ve been suffering because of me. Don’t worry, Credence, I don’t plan on killing you or your family. Though I think you might deserve it for killing me and my family.”  
  
“I remember you said you didn’t care about your family,” Credence mumbles and frowns when Graves takes his hand away, but he only moves it to Credence’s neck, his thumb over his artery.  
  
“You’re right. I really don’t,” Graves says and his gaze is so intense as he looks at Credence. “But you did kill me.”  
  
“You came back,” Credence says. “Like a cockroach.”  
  
Graves laughs and he laughs for a while. “Well,” he says, “that’s about the least flattering thing you could have chosen to compare me to.” His other hand slides up and through Credence’s hair. “Don’t be afraid, Credence.”  
  
Credence’s heart is still pumping and he feels adrenaline in his veins. If he wasn’t under this damn spell he can’t seem to break out of, he thinks he would be fighting for his life.  
  
“How can I not be?” he asks quietly.  
  
Graves moves closer then, into his space again, pressing his thumb into Credence’s neck until it becomes uncomfortable. “One day,” he says softly and leans in, his face nearly against Credence’s neck, “one day you’re going to ask for it. Because you won’t be afraid anymore.”  
  
His breath isn’t hot, more lukewarm against Credence’s neck and it makes him break out into goosebumps. When his lips touch Credence’s neck they’re not warm either and yet Credence’s eyes flutter shut and he feels a different sort of rush.  
  
“I’m never going to ask you to turn me,” he says and is mortified by how breathless and needy he sounds. “I’d rather you killed me for good.”  
  
“Who says I was talking about turning you?” Graves asks. He breathes in deeply, smelling Credence’s blood and his lips brush against Credence’s increasingly heated skin. “I have no interest in either of those things. For now.”  
  
“For now,” Credence repeats. He moves his hand up and grasps at Graves’ shirt. “Will you stop doing this? Please.”  
  
Graves chuckles and pulls back to look at Credence. “Only because you asked so nicely,” he says in a teasing sort of way.  
  
The feeling dissipates. The strange fog and haziness, the relaxation and the faint feeling of eroticism vanish. They’re replaced by Credence’s sudden panic, his wariness and his fear, and he wants to shove Graves away and run. He wants to hurt him in some way too.  
  
“Shh,” Graves shushes. “Don’t make me put it on you again.”  
  
Credence glares at him. “Why are you following me?” he demands, though he thinks it’s probably not smart to make demands at all.  
  
“Because you are the first person to kill me in America,” Graves says. “Which makes you interesting. But I do hate to see you in such a state,” he says, his tone suggesting otherwise. “You need to be as alive as you were that night.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure I am,” Credence says, gripping the book tightly under both blankets and thinking about smashing it across Graves’ face. “You were the only dead one that night.”  
  
Graves smiles. “Pun intended?” he asks and slides his hand to Credence’s shoulder. Credence hisses at the sudden flare of pain and Graves smiles. “Haven’t you ever wondered why they keep hurting?”  
  
“Assumed it had something to do with bacteria in your fucking claws,” Credence snaps. “Stop touching me.”  
  
“In a moment,” Graves says. He moves his hand to the blankets, pushing them aside and taking Credence’s left arm. He does it gently but Credence still stiffens. “Shh,” he shushes again and steadily rolls up Credence’s sleeve until the ugly, uneven pink scar is visible. “I do fantastic work, don’t I?”  
  
“Fuck you—”  
  
“Quiet, Credence,” Graves says firmly enough for Credence to snap his mouth shut. He lifts Credence’s arm and brushes his thumb over the scar. When a sharp and rather terrifying claw extends from his nail, Credence attempts to jerk away but Graves is using immense strength to keep him still and he doesn’t want to dislocate his shoulder.  
  
He nicks Credence’s skin, right in the middle of the scar and Credence whimpers, biting down on his tongue at the sudden pain.  
  
But Graves runs his thumb over it again, his claw disappearing and below it, the scar steadily fades.  
  
Healthy, pink skin is all that’s left.  
  
Credence stares down at his arm for a while before he looks at Graves. He’s not sure what to say about this and the idea of thanking him is so ridiculous it’s almost laughable. When he licks Credence’s blood off his thumb, he’s more ready to tell him to go fuck himself though.  
  
“Not even a thanks,” Graves says and lets go of Credence’s arm. His fingers move to his hair and he grips the strands, not gently, and leans in closer. “I suppose I’ll have to do the others another day,” he says softly into Credence’s ear.  
  
He bites the lobe of it, shocking Credence enough to flinch because he’d been expecting fangs, and he’s thoroughly embarrassed by the noise he makes high in his throat.  
  
“Stop,” he gasps.  
  
And he’s gone. His touch, his presence, his influence on Credence’s mind. His chuckle is carried on the wind but soon that is gone as well and Credence sits against the tree, trying to catch his breath and not fly into a panic.  
  
He clutches at his chest, his heart thundering away, tears in the corners of eyes from the humiliation of it. He knows this is what they do but he hasn’t been influenced like this for years now. It’s not hard to believe Graves has gotten stronger. That’s he stronger than all of the rest.  
  
Credence squeezes his eyes shut and tries to listen to birdsong and the wind through the branches of the trees and people chatting as they walk down the path. But he hears his labored breathing, feels his heart skipping beats in his chest, and realizes he is sweating.  
  
It’s cold still and he doesn’t feel hot but he feels mildly ill. Credence shakily stands up and stuffs the book in his pocket and folds his blanket. He looks at the other one, so much nicer than his own, that didn’t disappear when Graves had.  
  
He briefly thinks of taking it home but decides that is an incredibly bad idea for many reasons. He leaves the blanket and walks out of the park, trembling, feeling even more on edge now and wonders how Graves expects him to be any better when he keeps sneaking up on him and terrifying him.  
  
Credence walks home, five miles, but he barely feels it. The cold wind bites at his cheeks but his mind is stuck on the way Graves’ hand felt on his jaw, the way his lips felt on his neck and the way he made Credence’s blood boil in an entirely different way than any vampire ever has.  
  
It makes him angry. He won’t fall into a trap that will inevitably end in his death and possibly the death of his family. He simply won’t let it happen.  
  
When he’s home, he gets warm by the fireplace and thinks he needs to start carrying a stake on him, no matter how small it might be. It doesn’t matter if he can hit the right spot.  
  
He eats more dinner than usual and barely talks to his sisters or Ma. He says he has homework and goes upstairs into his bedroom. It’s true, but Credence browses the internet, the sites that might seem like crazy conspiracists visit, but they are true stories, real advice, and Credence reads. He has the equipment and maybe if he starts keeping it on him at all times, he’ll start to relax.  
  
And, just maybe, he’ll put another vampire down and can only hope it’s for good.  
  
——  
  
With a stronger conviction in mind, with a plan and the tools to enact it, Credence does, gradually, begin to feel better.  
  
He’s still jumpy and his heart still races whenever he sees a man in a black suit or coat with dark hair. He still has uncomfortable and frightening dreams, but he gets more sleep and can stomach more food.  
  
His pallor is more healthy and the rings around his eyes aren’t so noticeable. He looks at his arm often, at where the scar was, no mark there anymore, and wonders how Graves did it. How he’s done any of it.  
  
If the scars hurt because he’s been alive this entire time, why has it taken him over six months to show his face? Was he living elsewhere for a time? That doesn’t seem quite right.  
  
The scars have ached but they haven’t felt like his skin was only just ripped open until Graves began to follow him. Maybe he had lost strength for a while and was never really dead. He’d said he’d been killed but maybe it’s different for vampires.  
  
Credence decides speculating is only going to stress him out more and tries to focus on his classes and homework. Tries to make sure he’s aware whenever he leaves home, aware of his surroundings and the people around him.  
  
He works diligently on homework in the library and though it isn’t anything advanced - basic math and science and language - they’re somewhat more difficult for him simply because he was never taught them.  
  
It can get frustrating to know he’s so far behind his peers and he’s nearly thirty years old. It’s even more frustrating to know his mother is still capable of terrifying him, of keeping him trapped, of putting her own marks on him that will never go away.  
  
Credence might be eating and sleeping better, but he’s still immensely stressed and sometimes he thinks about walking to the East River, jumping in, and hoping the cold kills him quickly.  
  
Morbid, yes, but he’s had these sorts of thoughts since he was nine years old.  
  
He gets up from the table in the library to go hunt down a book that’s been recommended for his language class and finds himself in the corner of the library. It smells dustier here, like it isn’t used much, and he supposes it might not be, since most students are further along than him.  
  
The lights dim above him and Credence frowns as he scours the bookshelf and squints.  
  
It’s when the quiet settles in and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end that he realizes he’s in danger. The library is always quiet but it feels like any noise has been sucked out of it entirely, like time has slowed, and Credence tries.  
  
He tries to reach for the stake he keeps in his pocket, but he finds himself pinned roughly to the bookshelf instead, the breath knocked out of his lungs by the force of it. It’s painful too and Credence yelps, from both surprise and the pain of hitting his chin on a shelf.  
  
Graves is surrounding him, surrounding this corner, the entire library, and his chest is pressed against Credence’s back. He’s got Credence’s wrist pinned above him and is holding the other one at his side, probably so he doesn’t try to reach for anything else.  
  
Credence tries to shake him off, tries to kick him, anything, but it’s like trying to move a mountain and when the pressure on his wrist increases, a faint warning, Credence stops.  
  
Mostly. He does try to bite Graves’ arm, but Graves only shifts it a little and chuckles.  
  
“That’s my thing,” he says, low and husky, right into Credence’s ear.  
  
Credence has to swallow down a whimper and closes his eyes tightly. His entire front half is going to have perfectly bookshelf-like bruises, he’s sure, because he’s already sore.  
  
“Let me go,” he snarls.  
  
“No,” Graves says simply. He raises Credence’s other arm and uses one hand to pin his wrists above his head. “Still so scared,” he says softly, because Credence does feel a spike of fear at the position they’re in. “I won’t hurt you, sweetheart.”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Credence says angrily and tries to shift away, but it’s useless. “Let me go!”  
  
“Not so polite today,” Graves says, sliding his hand along Credence’s ribs and hip. He pulls out the stake in his pocket and a bottle of holy water and chuckles. “I’m not sure whether to be disappointed in you or not. Coming prepared is always a good idea, I suppose. But I don’t think you’d enjoy my company anymore if you killed me and I keep coming back for you.”  
  
The stake and glass bottle fall to the floor and Graves’ hand slides under Credence’s shirt, over his hot skin, across his hip and abdomen.  
  
“Stop it!” Credence says and tries to jerk away again, managing to at least move some. “Oh, you bastard,” he whispers when a familiar fog falls over his mind. He goes boneless and hates Graves for it. “Don’t do this to me.”  
  
“Don’t do what?” Graves asks and strokes Credence’s stomach and lower, his fingers brushing along the top of his belt. “I only want you to relax while I help you. Shh,” he shushes when Credence whimpers. He moves his hand out of Credence’s shirt and to his collar instead and he’s not gentle when he yanks on it.  
  
It tears the collar and Credence gasps, simultaneously frightened and thrilled. He’s angry that he feels that, knows it isn’t his own doing, but Graves doesn’t say anything about it.  
  
He’s exposing the scars there, Credence realizes, the two jagged ones he himself gave Credence. When Credence feels the sharpness of his extended claw, he tilts his head to the side to give him more room.  
  
“Good, love, that’s good,” Graves says softly. He nicks each scar just like last time but he doesn’t brush his thumb over them. Instead he presses his mouth against Credence’s neck and kisses down along it.  
  
Credence is trembling, terrified he’s about to be bitten, but there’s something so forbidden and erotic about it that arousal courses through his veins. He’s mortified but he can’t bring himself to care about it enough to struggle.  
  
He whines when Graves’ mouth moves over the scars and he feels his tongue and knows he’s tasting Credence’s blood.  
  
“Perfection,” Graves says, his breath tickling Credence’s damp skin. He brushes his thumb over the scars then and Credence doesn’t feel it happen, but he knows they have faded like the one on his arm. “Five more, isn’t there?”  
  
Credence inhales shakily and nods. Three on his other shoulder and the long one on his right arm, from his wrist nearly to his elbow. The one across his lower abdomen. He’d bled so much that night and he hates the memory of it, hates when he looks at the scars and smells the tang of blood and death in the air.  
  
“Why are you doing this?” Credence asks once he’s found his voice. It’s hard to, while Graves’ mouth is pressed against his neck and he’s pressed flush to Credence’s back.  
  
“It seems the polite thing to do. Healing the man who managed to kill me, an incredible feat,” Graves says. “Maybe one day I’ll give you new ones.” He chuckles when Credence whines. “Or maybe I’ll leave different marks on your body.”  
  
Credence squirms, trying not to become noticeably aroused, but it puts a certain image in his mind. He knows it’s only appealing because he’s being influenced and that he’ll be pissed about this later today. But right now, he’d like for Graves to stay for a moment longer and whisper in his ear.  
  
“I don’t want what you want,” Credence says and presses his forehead against his arm, still pinned above his head. “Please, Mister Graves, please stop.”  
  
“Mister Graves,” Graves says, amused. “I don’t think a hunter has ever called me that before. No, Credence, I’m not Mister Graves to you. And I will stop, because you ask so sweetly, but I want one thing from you first.”  
  
Credence whines and he tips his head back when Graves presses open-mouthed kisses along his shoulder. “Percy,” he gasps and blood is swiftly rushing downward, exactly where he doesn’t want it to go.  
  
“That’s it, Credence,” Percy says, soft and it would be intimate, maybe, if he was anyone else. “That’s the only name I want to hear from you from now on. Are you sure you want me to stop?”  
  
His hand slips under Credence’s shirt, resting over his hip.  
  
“Yes!” Credence says firmly, even while his head spins and he feels dizzy from arousal, from the way his blood is boiling.  
  
 _No_  
  
“Alright, love,” Percy says and gently lets go of Credence’s wrists. “You look better, Credence. Keep it up. I want you healthy.”  
  
“Before you drink all my blood?”  
  
Percy chuckles. “Not exactly what I had in mind,” he says. “You’ll know when you ask me for it.”  
  
“I’m never going to ask you for anything,” Credence says drowsily.  
  
There is no answer and Credence realizes he doesn’t feel a weight against him anymore, the hand on his hip gone, and he turns around. He blinks slowly as the fog lifts, not nearly as fast as last time and the lights are still dimmed. The quiet and oppressive feeling is still here.  
  
Percy is still here.  
  
Credence leans back against the bookshelf and closes his eyes tightly, digging his nails into his palm. The arousal goes away once he becomes embarrassed with himself for it, once he’s pissed at _Percy_ for making him feel that way, and in a rush, the noise returns and the library brightens.  
  
He is gasping for air, he realizes and closes his mouth, so he doesn’t draw attention to himself. He shakily grabs the stake and holy water, wondering why Percy didn’t take them, and puts them back in his pocket.  
  
His back is sweaty and he feels feverish and sickly. It’s not a good feeling whenever he comes out of what Percy does to him but he supposes most people never come out of it. They either die or are turned into vampires.  
  
Percy is fucking with him. He’s playing a game and to what ends, Credence doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to be prepared for it either. If Percy keeps doing this when he least expects him, when he can’t predict him, he doesn’t know how he’ll ever have the upperhand.  
  
And does he want Percy dead? Yes, he does, but if it means he’ll only come back again, stronger than he is now, with different powers already from the other vampires, it could be a lot worse for more than just Credence.  
  
For the entire city.  
  
Credence doesn’t know what to do. He’s as lost as he always has been and going home offers no comfort, no sanctuary from the madness that is his life.  
  
He wants to run. Run far away from here, from this city, run until he’s out of New York and no one may ever find him again. Not Percy, not Ma or his sisters. Start over and pretend none of it ever happened, even if it means leaving Modesty behind.  
  
He would die for them, he thinks, at least Modesty and Chastity, but he doesn’t think they’d die for him. And Credence still has the faint bit of life in him that wants to keep going.  
  
Percy is mixing up even more than he’s already mixed up, than he has been his entire life, and it makes tears burn in his eyes.  
  
Credence packs his things and goes home because Percy hasn’t invaded that space beyond his dreams and he hopes he never will.  
  
——  
  
After more research and not finding anything helpful, Credence asks the people in their chatroom what they might do if a vampire, like a hydra, came back from the dead with even stronger powers. He poses it as a hypothetical joke and that’s how they take it, giving their ideas for how they might kill such a vampire.  
  
A lot of it isn’t practical or useful, mostly fantasy, but Credence keeps an eye on the conversation for a while for any useful information.  
  
Someone suggests a wooden stake that’s been coated with pure silver and though the others joke that that’s for werewolves, most of them know better.  
  
Pure silver is the reason vampires never had reflections, all the way up until mirrors were backed with a different material. Silver repelled their unnaturalness, their living death, and holy water mixed with silver tends to cause more extensive damage, but most of them don’t carry it anymore.  
  
Silver injected straight into the blood has been known to make a vampire suffer extreme pain and something close to delirium, making them easy to kill. But that’s a rare occurrence, most vampires don’t let someone get so close and it’s hard to keep a good supply of silver. It’s expensive, even more so when buying it illegally, and vampire hunting isn’t exactly a lucrative business.  
  
Credence also thinks it would do jack shit to Percy Graves and he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself by trying and hearing Percy laugh at him.  
  
But a silver coated wooden stake might make some sort of difference. His heart may not beat but it’s still keeping him going, it’s his entire reason for still living, and Credence wonders if silver to the heart, along with a wooden stake, might keep him dead.  
  
That maybe when he turns to ash, he won’t be reborn out of it after.  
  
It’s not a solid theory or something he’s confident in, but he keeps it in mind. And he keeps the holy water on him and the stake and a small cross now too, one that’s made of silver, and thinks nothing good will come out of it, but it makes him feel better walking down the street.  
  
Sitting in the damn school library because he’s even been accosted here.  
  
And Percy doesn’t make things easy on him.  
  
He doesn’t always show up but Credence feels him anyway, feels the ghost of his touch, on his arm or his neck or his cheek. He feels his lips on his neck and he hears him laugh, faint, but it sounds like it surrounds him. It scares the absolute shit out of him each time it happens, which is probably why Percy laughs about it, and makes him livid because people continuously stare at him when he suddenly jerks or flinches or curses.  
  
He snarls under his breath that if Percy wants him healthy, he needs to stop, because he’s giving him nightmares and making him lose his appetite again.  
  
And, surprisingly, it works, for a time.  
  
Credence still has nightmares but sometimes they’re only nightmares because he wakes up mortified by what happened in them, by the way he can feel Percy against him, his tongue on his neck, on his stomach and lower. Sometimes he wakes up and can feel Percy’s mouth on his and he doesn’t know how much Percy is influencing this.  
  
He thinks he must be in some way, but Credence also thinks his own mind is betraying him and going along with the vampiric influence while he sleeps.  
  
Sometimes he wakes up feeling so empty and wanting to be filled that it puts tears in his eyes and makes him want to pull his hair out. He’s achingly hard most mornings and most mornings he simply waits for it to go away, but when the stress of his life seems like it’s moments away from suffocating him, he finds relief in it.  
  
He doesn’t think of Percy if he can help it. He tries to think of the faceless man that it’s always been or the few men he’s gotten intimate with, rushed and frantic and frightening, for his part, because he was sure his mother would know the moment he stepped through the front door.  
  
It’s a momentary relief but it’s enough to get him moving and not feeling so paralyzed by everything.  
  
He’s been sloppier when they go hunting. Sloppy enough for Ma to notice and threaten him for it. Sloppy enough for Chastity to do the same and for Modesty to ask him if he’s alright.  
  
He’s sloppier, yes, makes more mistakes, but he kills vampires or gets them good leads all the same. If he wishes now and then that one of them ripped him apart, well… no one else needs to know that.  
  
Winter has always been hard and the snow is a curse for them, but vampires thrive in it. They’ll always do well in the cold but it makes mortals slower and them faster and he knows being sloppy may actually catch up with him and result in his death.  
  
It doesn’t help that his coat is a few years old, barely held together anymore after it’s been patched up so many times, and makes him shake in the cold.  
  
Credence takes the meager money he earns for himself every month and goes to a department store and browses mens’ coats for a while. He can’t afford the ones that he thinks he might actually look nice in - that’s not the point anyway - but there are some that seem like they will keep him warm and that will last.  
  
He takes three of them and two button up shirts into the dressing rooms because he’s not sure if he’s so skinny nowadays that things might fit differently. He’s alone in here, the middle of the day on a Wednesday, even with only three dressing rooms.  
  
He locks the door behind himself and hangs everything up, pulling off his coat and his shirt. He grimaces when he gets a look at himself, too skinny and pale, riddled with scars.  
  
The ones on his shoulder, his right arm, and the long one across his abdomen look the ugliest, courtesy of Percy, and when he tentatively looks over his shoulder at his back, he feels a certain sort of hatred that only comes when he looks at his scars. So many of them, almost all inflicted by Ma, fresh bruises and smears of blood even now.  
  
He looks away from his back and though he has a few scars on the front of his body, he earned them killing murderous vampires and doesn’t mind them as much. Even Percy’s.  
  
Credence grabs one of the button up shirts and looks in the mirror.  
  
A scream is in his throat but a familiar hand clamps over his mouth before it gets out and Credence fights it, will always fight being snuck up on, but Percy pins him in such a way that he can’t fight.  
  
“Shh,” Percy shushes, something he is fond of and that Credence is just about done hearing. “Shh, love. I didn’t think it would be so bad this time. But you do look like you’re having a hard time still.”  
  
He’s looking at Credence through the mirror and Credence glares back at him. He bites his hand and Percy chuckles, moving it away and to Credence’s neck instead. It’s such a gentle touch but Credence feels the threat there anyway.  
  
“Stop sneaking up on me,” Credence hisses. “I told you, if you want me to not end up in the fucking hospital, stop harassing me! Stop showing up behind me and— and dimming the fucking lights and stopping time or whatever you’re doing! Stop it!”  
  
Percy raises his eyebrows when Credence finishes, his chest heaving. “Taking a toll on you, isn’t it?” he asks and smirks when Credence scowls. “You’re right, of course, but sometimes it’s hard to resist being near you. You are stunning. Though I’d prefer if I couldn’t see your ribs like I can now.” His hand drifts down from Credence’s neck to his ribs and rests finally on his hip.  
  
Credence’s cheeks are hot because he has to see this now, has to see Percy touching him rather than just feeling it. “Maybe if you leave me alone and let me live my life without you in it, I might look a little more healthy,” he says through gritted teeth. “I know this is a game to you, but it isn’t for me.”  
  
“Of course it isn’t,” Percy says, gentle against the shell of Credence’s ear. “And it is a fun one, I admit, but maybe I’ll take mercy on you. Just a little.”  
  
He doesn’t let go of Credence but he does take a step back and Credence sees him looking at his back, at the scars and fresh lashes, at the bruising, and tears are in his eyes before he can help it.  
  
“Just worry about the ones you put on me,” he says bitterly.  
  
“I will, love,” Percy says and when he looks at Credence in the mirror, his eyes are black again, standing out all the more in the whites of his eyes.  
  
It’s frightening and Credence’s heart picks up pace and he thinks he is going into a panic attack.  
  
But Percy’s hand moves over his back, over the fresh lashes, and it stings enough to keep Credence in the moment. He’s humiliated by the touch and tries to jerk away but Percy’s hand on his shoulder keeps him steady.  
  
With a start, Credence realizes the sting is gone. The bruises don’t hurt anymore when he shifts and the faint scent of blood he is so used to having when he takes off his shirt sometimes is nearly gone.  
  
Percy moves by him and Credence sees the blood on his hand. He’s momentarily terrified and disgusted that Percy might lick it off but he brushes it off on Credence’s shirt.  
  
Credence is instead offended by that, before he realizes the shirt already has his blood on it and it doesn’t matter.  
  
“Now,” Percy says and steps in front of Credence, into his space until Credence bumps back against the wall of the dressing room. “For this one.” He takes Credence’s arm and looks at the long scar with an interested eye. “I had a hold of you when your little sister put that cross on me. You pulled away and I left this on you seconds before you plunged a stake into my heart.”  
  
Credence’s heart is racing, because he knows that very well, and he licks his lips nervously. “Something I plan on doing again,” he says with as much conviction as he can. “You shouldn’t be here anymore.”  
  
“Maybe not,” Percy says and looks at Credence. “And yet here I am. This one will hurt more.”  
  
“I’m used to pain, believe it or not.”  
  
Percy smirks and nods in agreement. He straightens Credence’s arm and when his nail extends into a sharp claw, Credence wants to look away. But he can’t. His entire body tenses, waiting for the pain, but then a soothing haze and fog falls over him and he wants to curse Percy, but he leans into it because it would be nice to not care about the pain.  
  
He cuts a line into the middle of the scar and Credence whines a little, but Percy is quick to drag his thumb along the length of the scar until it fades. Pink and mottled scar tissue fades to healthy skin, only slightly smeared with blood, and Percy does lick his thumb off this time.  
  
“Take it off now,” Credence says, his speech slow and lazy.  
  
But Percy doesn’t. He moves closer to Credence and his lips are suddenly on his neck and Credence tips his head back with a gasp. Percy is smelling him, something that should be horrifying and usually is, when Percy isn’t making him feel like this, but he always follows breathing in Credence’s scent with his mouth.  
  
Open-mouthed kisses trailing along his shoulder and collar and neck, sucking gently over his collar bone. Credence moans and only has the thought to stop it once he’s already done it. He bites his lip and moves his hands to Percy’s shoulders.  
  
“Stop,” he says breathlessly. “Percy—”  
  
Percy bites him. It’s such a shock that Credence jumps and tries to shove Percy away, but he presses Credence firmly against the wall, pinning him there. And, Credence realizes, with immense relief, there are no fangs buried in his neck. Just a love bite, he thinks a little wildly, and his body relaxes into it, as angry as it’ll make him later.  
  
Percy chuckles against him once he kisses Credence’s skin, up his neck and along his jaw. He looks into Credence’s eyes and Credence wants to ask him.  
  
Wants to ask him to kiss him, to touch him more, anything, anything to give him relief for what he’s been experiencing lately.  
  
The thought that he’s in very real danger and should be trying to defend himself isn’t something that occurs to him.  
  
“Look at you,” Percy says softly. “You killed me not so long ago and now you want me. You want me to help you feel better because you think about me when you don’t want to.”  
  
Credence whines and he wants to deny it but Percy presses his thigh between Credence’s and he realizes he’s hard when the friction presses against his cock. He gasps and clutches at Percy’s shoulders.  
  
“Will you ask me, Credence?” Percy asks, his lips nearly against Credence’s and he does brush them over his chin while he continues to stare at Credence. His eyes are dark brown and less frightening than the black.  
  
He wants to ask. Credence desperately wants to ask. But he knows he’s being influenced by Percy because it’s what Percy wants. He knows this isn’t how he feels, he knows this is coercion, and he’s a little frightened to think if he had never learned what this feeling was, he would give Percy whatever he wanted.  
  
“No,” Credence manages to gasp. “No, I don’t… I don’t want this. Please, Percy, let me go. Please, stop.”  
  
Percy doesn’t look angry, like Credence was expecting he might. He smiles instead and kisses Credence’s chin and jaw once more before he pulls back. He slides his hands along Credence’s chest and to his abdomen, which jumps at the touch, but he doesn’t go any lower. His thumbs run along the scar.  
  
“As you wish, love,” Percy says and pulls back entirely, so he isn’t pressed against Credence’s unfortunately aching cock.  
  
Credence stares at him, breathing deeply, always short of air when Percy does this. He wants to ask still, he truly does, he wants Percy to touch him and make some of the agony he’s causing go away.  
  
“Percy,” he says and doesn’t know why he does.  
  
Between one blink and the next, Percy is gone.  
  
Credence stares at where he was, his skin on fire and his cock straining in his jeans. He blinks a few times and tries to shake the fog that seems to be lingering today. But the lights aren’t dimmed and Credence thinks they came back brighter a while ago.  
  
He sluggishly pulls on his clothes and realizes that there is no more fog, no more haze of arousal influencing him. That particular feeling is gone but Credence’s blood still burns and he feels empty again.  
  
It’s so dangerous that it puts a little fear in him, wakes him up some.  
  
Getting back home seems to take ages, once he’s paid for a new coat, and he only has a couple hours to eat dinner and get ready to go out for a night of hunting.  
  
Credence takes a shower and when he thinks of Percy’s teeth against his skin, of his lips on his chin, nearly against his own, he’s painfully hard very quickly. Credence bites his lip and strokes himself and doesn’t care for a moment what this makes him. He needs relief and when he thinks of Percy being the one to fill him, he comes and barely refrains from moaning.  
  
When they leave that night and follow the latest lead on a vampire, Credence is angry with himself, but not as much as he should be.  
  
He feels like he’s spiraling. He already was spiraling, his mental and physical health, feeling like he’s going to crack at any moment, but now he feels like he’s spiraling in a different way.  
  
If he stops it, he might live a little longer.  
  
If he doesn’t stop it, he might die a little faster.  
  
Credence isn’t sure which sounds better to him anymore.  
  
——  
  
Credence’s midterms are nearly a disaster. He’s jumpy again and the quiet of taking them makes him think about things he shouldn't be thinking about.  
  
He barely manages to pass them and it makes him angry because he had done this for himself. He wanted to do well because he wanted to escape this life and then Percival Graves came back into it and is ruining it for him.  
  
There’s a lot of hatred for him, for himself, for his mother and the life she has forced him to live. He lashes out at his sisters occasionally, in a way that makes them shrink away and they don’t tell Ma when he does. He feels rotten afterward and wants to apologize, but can’t bring himself to.  
  
When he lashes out at Ma he gets his punishment anyway, one that he deserves.  
  
But he has a few weeks off of school and Credence uses them to try and catch up on sleep. He wants to stay home because home means Percy isn’t there but home also means his family and Ma is nearly as agonizing as the damn vampire.  
  
It’s not really a surprise to him that he comes down with what must be the flu. He has a fever and body aches, chills, and throws up more than once. It’s about the only way he can get out of going hunting for a few nights and he takes it. He’d rather live like this for a month than go hunting for more fucking vampires.  
  
Credence realizes on the second night, when Ma and his sisters get home in the early morning hours, that he hadn’t even worried about them.  
  
There’s guilt in his stomach for it but he thinks of Percy and lets himself be angry at him instead.  
  
He stays home another night, still sickly, but his fever is gone. And while Ma and the girls are gone, Credence puts on his new coat over a few layers of clothes and wears his thick boots and leaves home. He needs fresh air, away from his small and stifling bedroom.  
  
The cold doesn’t feel good, not at all, but it’s something different. It makes him think of different things and he walks out of the neighborhood and to the small playground next to it.  
  
Soft mounds of snow cover the slide and teeter totter and the swings. Credence brushes it off one of the swings and wipes it dry with his sleeve before he sits down. He’s shaking, hard enough to rattle his teeth, and he thinks he’ll probably only motivate his fever into returning, but he’s feeling so mixed up and destructive he doesn’t care.  
  
It comes as no surprise to him when it seems the very moonlight shining on the white snow dims. Credence is up, moving more swiftly than he thought possible, a stake in his hand and he plunges it toward the vampire standing behind him.  
  
His wrist is grabbed, tightly enough to snap the bone, and Credence shouts in pain as he drops the stake, coated in silver, and knows he’s going to die. He looks at Percy with a snarl.  
  
Percy doesn’t look surprised. He almost looks pleased, like he was expecting Credence to do this one of these days, but he squeezes his wrist even tighter until the pain has Credence down on one knee.  
  
“Now, Credence,” Percy says silkily. “I thought we were getting to know each other better than this. But I suppose I might have been more disappointed if you didn’t try.” He chuckles. “Silver was a good idea.”  
  
Credence is crying from the pain in his wrist, crying from frustration and anger and his general hatred of life. “Just do it, Percy,” he hisses. “Just do what you mean to do to me.”  
  
“Not yet, sweetheart,” Percy says and runs his fingers through Credence’s hair when he chokes on a sob. “Sometimes I just don’t know my own strength.”  
  
The bone snapping back into place hurts just as much as it did breaking and Credence shouts and cradles his arm to his chest. He’s half bent over the snow and crying still and Percy’s fingers are in his hair, too cold, too inhuman, too dead.  
  
Credence feels nauseous and he’s shaking so hard it’s making his body ache. He thinks his fever is coming back and it must be, because Percy swipes his hand over Credence’s forehead like he’s feeling how bad it is.  
  
He’s not entirely sure how it happens. One moment he’s sitting in the freezing cold of winter and the next he’s in warmth, in a bed, wet clothes taken off and replaced by warmer ones. He’s still shivering but he feels that is steadily fading too and when he opens his eyes, he sees his bedroom.  
  
He sees Percy.  
  
Percy is kneeling at his bedside, peering at Credence and his eyes are black. Credence isn’t sure if he’s real or not.  
  
“You want to end things with me, Credence?” Percy asks softly. “You want to try, see if you can do what you did almost eight months ago? I’m willing to let you. We’ll go toe to toe again.” He moves his hand up and brushes Credence’s hair back from his forehead. “Meet me at the church. You know the one. Bring what you need, but no one else.”  
  
Credence stares at him, blinking slowly. “What if I kill you?” he asks quietly, his voice raspy.  
  
“Then I die,” Percy says with a smile. “And if I come back stronger, you face the consequences.”  
  
“What if you kill me?”  
  
“Then I suppose you’ll either see what’s on the other side or you won’t know anything at all anymore. If I kill you, you can be comforted by the fact that your family will miss you.”  
  
“You won’t kill them?” Credence asks warily.  
  
“No, sweetheart,” Percy says. “It’s only you I’m interested in. The church, five days from now. Midnight. Be there or I’ll come to you and you won’t like it when I do.”  
  
Credence thinks it must have been leading to this and he finds he has no wish to argue about it. He nods, just once, and Percy smiles.  
  
He pulls the blanket up higher, touches Credence’s neck, and then he’s gone.  
  
——  
  
Credence recovers quickly from his illness over the next day. He feels completely fine on the second day and doesn’t know if that was Percy’s influence or if he’d already nearly recovered and an emotional night in the freezing snow temporarily made it worse again.  
  
He doesn’t really care.  
  
Sunday is in three days and he does know the church Percy meant. He supposes Percy must have found out in his own circles about it. The church that Credence lived in until he was nine years old, the one they’d had to abandon when his mother decided vampire hunting is what they would do. It had been condemned by the city and it’s in such a poor neighborhood that the city hasn’t torn it down because they don’t care.  
  
It’s used mostly by the homeless and drug addicts when the police aren’t chasing them away. Credence has avoided it most of his life but the few times he’s seen it, it’s been covered in graffiti and the windows have been boarded up.  
  
Of course Percy would choose his childhood home of horrors for them to go toe to toe with each other.  
  
He debated pretending that was all a fever dream but Percy’s threat to come to him if he didn’t show up is enough for him to know he’ll go. Percy will be there, he knows it in his heart, but he doesn’t think he’ll be the one walking out this time.  
  
Percy is too strong, too fast now, and he knows Credence well. Credence won’t have his family to aid him and he thinks only sheer, dumb luck would save his ass and Credence hasn’t had an ounce of good luck in all his life.  
  
He can only hope that when he dies, his sisters realize he was the only thing that stood between them and the worst of their mother. Maybe Chastity will grow some sense and get them out of there. Get them out of the insanity of the Barebone family and their obsession with hunting down and killing vampires.  
  
Lead a normal life, the way Credence had always wanted to. The way he’d told himself he would, even, the way he was excited to, after he’d killed Percy and told his mother he was doing something for himself.  
  
It’s all gone to shit but that’s life for Credence and he thinks dying by Percy’s hand is probably the best way to go.  
  
He pretends he is still recovering from the flu by being slow to move on Thursday and Friday night. Ma is angry with him and tells him he’s useless and weak, all par for the course, Credence thinks wryly, and tells him to stay home on Saturday night.  
  
They leave late, around ten, and Credence has three stakes coated in silver, a large silver cross that’s been dipped in holy water, and a larger glass bottle of holy water. He carries only one personal item on him, a small wooden carving of a horse Modesty gave him when she was four and had found it in the park by their home.  
  
He’s kept it on his bookshelf all these years and holds it sometimes, when it all gets to be too much, to remind him why he stays. Stays alive and stays with Ma.  
  
But Credence can’t care about that anymore.  
  
If he doesn’t go, he’ll have to face Percy either way and that might be in front of his family. Percy could kill them then and what could Credence do about it?  
  
He leaves home close to midnight and once he’s gotten to a main street, he takes a taxi to Pike Street, a few miles away, because it’s snowing and he doesn’t think he can handle another night in it.  
  
Credence asks the driver to stop at the end of the street and pays him before he gets out. He looks around the familiar street, a stain to his eyes, a place he wished he would never have to see again. But the house of horrors he lived in as a child might as well be the one he dies in at nearly thirty years old.  
  
He walks down the street toward the church, recognizing its dark walls. There are other people on the street but they ignore him and he ignores them. He crosses the street once he’s near the church and walks to it. The door is slightly cracked open, just enough for him to notice.  
  
There is no quietly sneaking inside. There is no way to come in hidden, no way to do anything but arm himself and walk inside and hope Percy isn’t right there waiting for him, an easy meal.  
  
Credence closes his eyes and sighs. He pulls out a stake and the large cross and moves forward. He pushes open the door, which creaks too loudly, and steps inside. It’s eerily dark, which means Percy has sucked the light out of this place too.  
  
But further toward the back of the church, near the kitchen, a fire is lit. It’s been made with scraps of wood and is small but it provides some light. Only a little and his breathing sounds too loud in here. Far too loud.  
  
Credence closes the door and moves further in, trying not to step on anything as he looks quickly around for a pair of eyes, reflecting yellow light like a cat, always a disturbing sight.  
  
He sees nothing and hears nothing but the crackling of the fire.  
  
It’s terrifying and he grips the stake harder in his hand and tries to still the cross shaking in his grasp.  
  
A brush of fingers moves across his arm and Credence gasps, whirling around, but he doesn’t see anything.  
  
Percy chuckles and it carries through the church, everywhere and coming from nowhere.  
  
Credence is wildly out of his element.  
  
When a small breeze moves across his arm, he plunges the stake into darkness and hits nothing, only stumbles forward and turns, brandishing the cross. But Percy isn’t there and Credence is sweating, his heart beating frantically.  
  
“Are you so afraid?”  
  
The question is asked directly behind him, clear as can be and Credence turns around, holding the cross up and he sees the faint yellow sheen of vampiric eyes now.  
  
“Shouldn’t I be?” Credence asks and thrusts his arm forward.  
  
Percy catches his wrist like he had in the park and he must be affected by the cross because it completely catches fire and Credence shouts in alarm.  
  
The flames don’t touch him, only Percy, and he looks unaffected despite the burning of his skin. He blows the cross out like it’s a match and Credence drops it, a loud thump on the ground, and Credence tries to drive the stake forward, knowing it’s no use.  
  
Percy is gone suddenly from in front of him. He’s behind him and his hand clamps down on Credence’s mouth, completely healed already, and his arm circles his waist.  
  
The innate desire to fight is still in Credence and he squirms and tries to buck Percy off, tries to kick him, but Percy is an impregnable wall of strength. He drags Credence, kicking and biting at his hand, across the church and toward the fire.  
  
For a moment Credence thinks he might throw him on the fire and he wants to tell Percy he needs a bigger one than that to kill him.  
  
But Percy moves to the wall next to the first and shoves Credence against it, knocking the air from his lungs with a grunt. He removes his hand when Credence bites it again but he only tsks at him and his hand roams over Credence’s pockets, inside his coat and shirts, his jeans, and pulls out the other stakes, the bottle of holy water that he tosses away. He pulls out the horse and Credence stiffens.  
  
“No,” he whispers hoarsely. “Please.”  
  
Percy is quiet for a moment before he sets the horse down on the half wall between the kitchen and living area that also was used to sit pews for sermons. He searches Credence once more before he sighs.  
  
“You came prepared,” he says. “But you have no more fight left in you, Credence.”  
  
“Your design, I’m sure,” Credence says and smells the rotten wood of the church’s walls. “Wearing me down while you followed me and snuck up on me. I stopped feeling safe a while ago.”  
  
“You stopped feeling safe before you even knew me,” Percy says. His hand slides down Credence’s side, a soft caress, and he moves it under his various layers of clothing to rest on his hip, which he seems to like doing. “You haven’t felt safe for nearly your entire life.”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about my life story,” Credence snaps. “Finish it and let it be done.”  
  
“Killing you isn’t entirely what I want,” Percy says. “I only wanted you here.”  
  
Credence knows Percy isn’t burning because this was never a real church. “Why?” he asks bitterly. “Plan on making me one of you in the place that already carries my nightmares?”  
  
“No, love,” Percy says and his mouth is on Credence’s neck. “We haven’t had privacy.”  
  
Credence stiffens and bites his lip. There’s been a certain direction Percy goes in when he’s with Credence, something that follows Credence into his dreams, into the damn shower, and he feels his belly tighten.  
  
“I don’t want you,” he says. “Even if you make me by putting me under a spell.”  
  
“I don’t want to do that to you,” Percy says. “But I know you want me. You think I can’t smell that on you? Your fear, your anger, your despair. Your arousal and your desire?”  
  
Credence inhales sharply when Percy presses flush against him and trails kisses along his neck and to his ear. “Percy,” he says. “I… I can’t. No, I don’t want to. And I can’t.”  
  
“Why can’t you?”  
  
Credence laughs helplessly. “I kill your kind for a living.”  
  
“And yet you still want me,” Percy says. “I’m not going to kill you and you’re not going to kill me. I want to give you what you want, Credence. Everything you want. I’ll give you my hand, if you want that. My mouth. My cock,” he whispers in Credence’s ear. “I’ll make you feel good.”  
  
Credence whimpers and shifts uncomfortably. His cock is getting hard no matter how much he’s trying to stop it. Percy is likely lying to him. He wants to use him, to fuck him, and then kill him. He’s certain of that.  
  
He doesn’t think he will be walking out of here at all and he might fight to try and save his life but right now… right now he thinks he doesn’t care. Right now, he thinks he’s tired.  
  
“You’ve made me want that,” Credence says. “You did that to me every time. It’s not what I want, Percy.”  
  
“I didn’t make you want anything. Only magnified what you already felt,” Percy says and kisses Credence's neck. He gently bites him, just a small one. “Your blood smells so sweet, love. But it’s even better when you’re aroused. Fuck, you have no idea how beautiful it is. How beautiful you are.”  
  
Credence bites his lip and squeezes his eyes shut. His cock throbs insistently and he shifts. He gasps when Percy presses against his ass and he feels his own cock, hard, and the way he lightly grinds into Credence.  
  
“Fuck,” Credence whispers. “I don’t trust you. I don’t trust you won’t kill me after or my family.”  
  
“I won’t,” Percy says simply. “You’ll see that soon. Maybe now.”  
  
Credence gasps in surprise when Percy grabs him and turns him around, pressing his back against the wall. He looks at him, the gentle glow of the fire falling over his pale skin. He _is_ handsome. Credence knew that when he’d first laid eyes on him but it hadn’t meant anything then.  
  
It does now. Credence thinks about his dreams, the things he’s imagined when he holds his own cock in hand and tries to stifle his moans. The feeling of emptiness, of wanting to be filled.  
  
“Percy,” he whines when Percy presses their crotches together. “Please, I don’t want… I don’t want to do this…” He has a hard time speaking when Percy’s lips are on his jaw and his eyes flutter shut. “I can’t fuck you and see your crimes in the newspaper after.”  
  
“Have you?”  
  
Credence frowns for a while and realizes he hasn’t. There have been murders, but none that carried the sort of brutalness Percy is known for. But he doesn’t know if Percy has toned that down to orchestrate this or not.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Credence says breathlessly. “You’re still going to kill innocent people.”  
  
“Maybe,” Percy says, “and maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. What matters right now is you and me.” He grinds against Credence again. “I want to make love to you. Will you let me?”  
  
Credence whines and tips his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. Percy takes advantage of his exposed neck by kissing along it and his tongue occasionally brushes over his skin. He sucks at Credence’s artery and Credence grasps at his shoulders.  
  
He thinks of his life. Of the shitshow it’s always been, of the horrific things he’s seen, done and had done to him. He thinks of Percy, following him and putting him under his spell, both draining the life out of him and making him want more than he’s ever wanted.  
  
He thinks about not caring about life anymore. About wanting to die because there is no hope for happiness. There never has been. He hasn’t been worried about his sisters the way he should be anymore and he thinks of abandoning them often to save himself from this life.  
  
To save his own life, but even that doesn’t sound appealing anymore.  
  
Credence looks at Percy and Percy gazes back, his eyes dark, his cock hard against Credence’s. His skin is hot, boiling hot, and he aches everywhere in a way he never has before.  
  
He nods. “Fuck me,” he whispers, because he can’t call it love. “Please.”  
  
Percy smiles and slides his hand further up along Credence’s side. His other hand moves to the nape of Credence’s neck and for the first time, Percy kisses him.  
  
It’s as searing as Credence imagined it would be and he moans, melts into it, clutching at Percy’s coat. His tongue isn’t warm, not until Credence’s warmth touches him, but it feels so good. Percy presses his cock against Credence’s over and over again, until he has to pull back to gasp for air.  
  
Percy kisses Credence’s neck and his hand moves to Credence’s belt, deftly undoing it and taking it off, tossing it aside. He unbuttons and unzips his pants and yanks them down a little. His hand is under Credence’s boxers so suddenly and unexpectedly that Credence yelps and his hips buck when Percy wraps his hand around his aching cock.  
  
Credence merely holds on as Percy strokes him and thinks he’s going to come before he gets the chance to be fucked. Percy must sense that because he lets Credence go and he whines at the loss and Percy’s chuckle, so familiar now, pressed against his neck, makes him shiver.  
  
“Fuck,” Credence gasps when Percy bites him. He always expects to feel fangs but he never does. It’s still such a good feeling, the momentary fear and thrill. “Percy, please.”  
  
“Soon, love,” Percy says. He moves back and helps Credence out of his coat, out of his two shirts, huffing a small laugh. He leaves the third one on but he yanks it open and the plastic buttons bounce across the floor. “Beautiful,” Percy says and his thumb swipes over the scar again. “Have you been fucked before, Credence?”  
  
“Once,” Credence says and he’s panting, which embarrasses him, but he’s on fire and more aroused than he’s ever been. “Just once.”  
  
Percy smiles and moves his hands to Credence’s jeans. He pushes them and his boxers down and Credence kicks them off, feeling immensely exposed while Percy is still fully dressed.  
  
“Turn around,” Percy says. “And spread your legs.”  
  
Credence blushes but the sound of Percy’s voice, a little demanding but hoarse from his own arousal, might be the sexiest thing he’s ever heard. He does as he says, slightly disappointed he won’t see Percy’s face when he’s fucked.  
  
When he hears a cap of a bottle open, Credence huffs and presses his forehead against his arm. “You came prepared,” he says dryly, shifting in anticipation.  
  
“As prepared as you did,” Percy chuckles. His hand strokes over Credence’s ass, gently spreading his cheek. “Fucking stunning, Credence. I hope you don’t mind,” he adds, “but I’m not going to take it easy on you.”  
  
“That’s a shock,” Credence says before he gasps, flinching at the sudden feeling of cold fingers and colder lube brushing over his hole. He whines as Percy strokes over him, spreading the lube, and feels precome leaking from the tip of his cock. “In me,” he says and presses back against Percy’s fingers.  
  
“As you wish,” Percy says, a smirk in his voice and he slides a finger into Credence. Once he’s gotten lube deeper in, he curls his finger, finding Credence’s prostate and stroking it.  
  
Credence moans, loud and broken. “Oh, fuck,” he gasps when Percy does it a little harder. His heart is thundering away and for once he’s not terrified. He’s hornier than he’s ever been, but not scared, even if he knows he should be. “Percy,” he whines, shivering. “More.”  
  
“Shh,” Percy shushes. “You’ll get more soon. I’m not going to hurt you.” He slides his finger in and out and it feels like a tease to Credence and he kicks Percy’s shin. Percy laughs. “I think I like you better when you’re not so polite. But I want to hear you beg too.”  
  
“I’m sick of begging,” Credence says and it’s true. He’s sick and tired of begging for mercy from his mother, from Percy. And he doesn’t know if Percy doesn’t like that because he pulls his finger out and Credence wants to snap at him for it but Percy pushes two fingers in then. He cries out instead and tips his head back, gasping. “Yes! Oh, God. Percy,” he moans when Percy rubs his prostate again. “That feels so good.”  
  
“I know it does, love,” Percy says, his voice pitched lower. “I won’t make you beg for it today, Credence. I do want to hear you, however, so stop biting your lip.”  
  
Credence realizes he is, trying to stifle any more loud noises, and he lets it go because he thinks it’s fair. And he does moan wantonly as Percy thrusts his fingers in and out of him, slick with a generous amount of lube, and thinks he’s never felt something so divine.  
  
He’s breathing far too heavily for only having a couple fingers in him, sweating too despite the cold, his forehead damp against his arm. He’s getting lost in this, but he doesn’t care. He just doesn’t care anymore.  
  
He groans when Percy curls his fingers just right and gasps his name when he spreads Credence’s ass cheek more. He’s watching his fingers move in and out of him, Credence knows, and the idea is somehow more of a turn on than he expects.  
  
“Percy,” Credence says, gasping and pressing back against his fingers. “More. Then fuck me. I want you inside of me.”  
  
Percy’s lips are on his neck, behind his ear, which he lightly nibbles on. “I will be,” he whispers. “You look so beautiful like this. Your moans are so sweet. But not as sweet as the blood in your veins. I’ve only had a small taste but you’re better than anyone else. Anyone, Credence.”  
  
Credence moans. He has the sudden desire to ask Percy to bite him, to sink those long and sharp fangs into the veins in his neck, to feel him drinking his blood. But Percy might not stop, for all he knows, he may keep drinking until Creedence is dead and death is the last thing on his mind right now.  
  
He’s desperate to feel Percy inside of him and he’s nearly there, pulling his fingers out and from the cold touch before he slides three in, Credence knows he put more lube on them. He isn’t trying to hurt Credence and Credence will think about that later, if he has the chance.  
  
There’s a brief sting but it’s gone as swiftly as it came and Credence thinks Percy healed it. It only makes him moan louder and he cries out when Percy begins to fuck him with his fingers, hard, ungentle, and exactly what Credence wants.  
  
“Fuck!” he says. And he’s glad then that Percy isn’t touching his cock because he groans against Credence’s neck and the sound would have made him come if Percy was touching him. He moves his hand back, holding the back of Percy’s head as he sucks a bruise on Credence’s hot skin. “Oh,” Credence gasps when Percy bites him. “Fuck me! Please, Percy, I’m fucking ready, fuck me!”  
  
Percy laughs against him and kisses where he’d been sucking. “As you wish,” he says, curling his fingers and stroking Credence’s prostate until he’s moaning, high and desperate. “That’s it, sweetheart. Feels good, doesn’t it? Turn around.”  
  
His fingers are gone and Creedence whines to lose them, but the idea that he might be facing Percy as he fucks him is enough to make up for it. He’s shaking all over, his fingertips tingling as he turns around, pressing back against the wall, glad for his shirt. Percy made him keep it on for that reason, he realizes, and he shudders as he sees the look in Percy’s eyes.  
  
They’re black again, hooded with arousal and he strokes Credence’s abdomen and takes off his own belt. He moves swiftly as he gets his slacks undone and when he pulls his cock out, Credence moans.  
  
He’s thick and there’s precome on the tip that Credence wants to taste and maybe, if he survives this encounter, he’ll get to.  
  
Percy’s hands slide back to Credence’s ass and he lifts him, so suddenly and so easily that Credence yelps in surprise, his arms moving around Percy’s neck. His strength isn’t new to Credence but he’s shocked all the same and stares at Percy and thinks he’s never seen someone so gorgeous, so demanding and large in presence, and certainly has never seen someone who is looking at Credence the way he is now.  
  
He holds Credence up against the wall with his thigh and one hand and grabs his cock with the other, letting Credence slide down just a little, until the head presses against his hole.  
  
Credence arches his back and moans. “Yes,” he whispers when Precy looks at him. “In me, Percy, please. Don’t take it easy.”  
  
Percy smiles. “I won’t, love,” he says and presses up until he sinks into Credence with a groan.  
  
Credence’s fingers tighten on his shoulders as he shouts and presses his head back against the wall, filled so suddenly, exactly what he’s been missing since Percy stormed back into his life. Percy doesn’t move immediately and Credence looks down at him, gasping for air, and the look of pleasure, absolute pleasure on Percy’s face makes him moan.  
  
He wraps his arm around Percy’s back and holds onto his shoulder, his shirt tight in his hand, and nods.  
  
Percy holds Credence up by his ass and pulls out and thrusts back in, a hard snap of his hips. Credence shouts his name and Percy fucks him then, hard and fast, hard enough that it should hurt, but it doesn’t.  
  
It’s loud in the church, the sound of skin slapping against skin, Credence’s cries and Percy’s groans. Credence digs the heel of his boots into Percy’s thighs and wraps both of his arms around his shoulders.  
  
Percy’s mouth is everywhere, on Credence’s shoulder and neck, his jaw, his chin, until he kisses Credence and Credence kisses him back. He moves his hand through Percy’s hair, gently gripping the strands and moaning against him as Percy continues to thrust into him.  
  
Credence has to pull back for air and he keeps holding Percy like this, his head pressed against Percy’s and each time Percy bites his neck, he gets closer to his orgasm.  
  
His cock is leaking heavily between them but Credence doesn’t dare touch himself, because he doesn’t want this to end.  
  
“Percy,” Credence says, his voice trembling, which Percy must like because he moans in a way that’s going to haunt Credence. “Percy, please, _please.”_  
  
Percy looks up at him, his lips wet from kissing Credence, from kissing his neck, and he licks them. “What do you want from me, love?” he asks, broken between his own labored breathing, something Credence didn’t know could happen.  
  
That vampires might run out of breath too.  
  
It’s inexplicably hot and Credence shudders, tightening his grip on Percy’s hair.  
  
“Do it,” he whispers and doesn’t care what it costs him. Percy’s hips snap harder suddenly, knocking a cry out of him. “Please, Percy, I want it! Please give it to me, please.”  
  
It seems to do something to Percy. He bares his teeth and he’s fucking Credence faster now, until Credence can’t do anything but moan and gasp his name and hold on. He moves his hand to Credence’s hair and tightens his fingers in it, but it’s not painful and the way he tilts Credence’s head is gentle.  
  
Credence sees the fangs then, just slightly, and his ass tightens around Percy’s cock and he thinks he may come untouched. But he doesn’t and Percy seems to like the feeling because he groans against Credence’s neck.  
  
He moves along Credence’s neck, kissing it, dragging his tongue along it and sucking against his skin. He’s not over the artery that he could drain Credence’s blood from so easily and when he opens his mouth and bites Credence, it’s a smaller one he sinks his fangs into.  
  
Credence shouts. It’s the pain of inch long fangs in his neck and the pleasure of being fucked harder than he thinks anyone else could manage. The pain fades quickly and Credence squeezes his eyes shut as he feels Percy pulling blood from him.  
  
Percy’s moan sounds as desperate as Credence’s but he doesn’t stop moving and Credence tightens his fingers in his hair. He moves his other hand between them and grasps his throbbing cock and strokes himself and Percy’s groan is one of approval.  
  
He’s so close, his balls tight, and just the idea of being fed from while he’s being fucked like this should finish him, but it doesn’t. He comes when Percy pulls his fangs out instead and sharp pain moves through him again, so suddenly that he shouts from it, shouts from the force of his orgasm.  
  
Come lands on Percy’s shirt, on Credence’s stomach, and he holds tightly onto Percy still, gasping and saying his name, all he’s capable of right now.  
  
Percy licks the blood from his neck and when he looks up at Credence, it’s smeared around his mouth and his eyes are completely black, even the whites, and it should scare Credence, but it doesn’t. He moves his hands to Percy’s cheeks and kisses him instead, open mouthed and wet and he tastes his own blood, sharp and metallic, unpleasant, but he doesn’t care.  
  
Percy only thrusts twice more then before he presses flush to Credence, holding him tight and steady as he comes, groaning into Credence’s mouth. His tongue moving over Credence’s, his blood shared between them, as he fills him with come is the most intense and erotic thing Credence has ever experienced.  
  
That he will ever experience, most likely.  
  
He pulls back to breathe and gasps, wrapping his arms tightly around Percy’s neck. He pants as he presses his cheek to Percy’s head, his eyes closed, and feels Percy’s own quick breaths against his neck, right where he’d bitten Credence.  
  
Percy licks him and it stings for just a moment before that’s gone too. Closing the wounds, Credence thinks, with another small taste of Credence’s blood.  
  
It’s cold from the snow falling outside but Credence is covered in a fine sheen of hot sweat, the only sound in the church their breathing and Credence’s occasional whimper when Percy shifts and his cock moves inside of him.  
  
“Percy,” Credence whispers, for no real reason other than to say his name.  
  
“Beautiful, Credence,” Percy says. “You’re so beautiful. Thank you for letting me taste you.”  
  
Credence smiles faintly. “You knew I’d ask eventually,” he says quietly and feels Percy chuckle against him. “That was incredible.”  
  
“It was,” Percy agrees, still holding Credence up like he weighs nothing. He moves back just a bit and his cock slips out of his Credence, followed by a surprising amount of come.  
  
Credence blushes when he hears the first bit hit the ground. He feels empty again, but not in such a distressing way, and he likes the feeling of Percy’s come leaking out of him anyway.  
  
But Credence finds himself scared to look at Percy. Scared that now Percy is out of him, he’ll have different plans for Credence. That he still won’t walk out of this church alive and it makes his heart race a little faster.  
  
Percy pulls back to look at him and his eyes are normal, a soft brown, and he gazes at Credence with a faint smile. “I’m not going to kill you, Credence,” he says. “Nor am I going to kill your family.”  
  
Credence doesn’t entirely believe him but he slides his hand across his shoulders and his fingers through his hair anyway. “Are you going to keep stalking me?” he asks and smiles, unable to help it when Percy laughs.  
  
“Do you want me to?” Percy asks. “Come up behind you in the canned vegetable aisle and fuck you just like this?”  
  
“Oh, God,” Credence says, laughing. “Scar everyone for life.”  
  
“I’d make sure no one could see,” Percy says with a smirk. “Or maybe you can come to me. So I can lay you down and fuck you in my bed.”  
  
Credence’s cheeks are hot and he swallows dryly. He likes the sound of that but the idea of returning to his life now, of returning to hunting down other vampires while fucking the worst of them all is… well, it’s nearly unbearable.  
  
He can’t keep doing this anymore. He had come here with the faint hope that Percy would kill him and he’s hoped for it outside of here too. He thinks about jumping from the Brooklyn Bridge and only hoping he dies instantly from it.  
  
He can’t keep having nightmares and getting no sleep, he can’t keep being terrified of his mother, of being terrified of life. Terrified of Percy, even, despite what he’s just given Credence and what he says he won’t take.  
  
He doesn’t want to walk out of this church the same person he was when he walked inside of it.  
  
“I want to,” Credence says softly. “But I’m so tired, Percy.”  
  
Percy smiles and it’s softer than all the others have been. “I know you are, love. You have been for a long time,” he says. “I told you I hate seeing you this way.”  
  
Credence bites his lip. He’d been fairly sure Percy was mocking him then and he might have been, but maybe he means it now. He wants to say something and he doesn’t know what, but Percy moves his hand to his stomach, wiping the come away with his sleeve. Credence realizes what he means to do when a claw extends from his finger and tenses, unable to help it, before Percy scratches a thin line through the scar there. He only winces.  
  
Percy heals it with a slow stroke of his thumb and it fades until only unmarred skin is left behind. Credence watches Percy lick the blood from his thumb. There’s some still smeared around his mouth and Credence is sure he looks the same and isn’t disgusted by it, like he should be.  
  
“Why are you healing them? Really?” Credence asks.  
  
“Because I don’t want you to remember when we fought,” Percy says. “Because I don’t want to leave my own behind with all of the others. I want to kiss you, all of you, and not see them and hope the memory of them doesn’t hurt you anymore either.”  
  
Credence shifts a little, his knees starting to ache. “Why?” he asks, genuinely confused by what might be a kind thing, as strange as it is. “Even if we fuck for a while, things will eventually change.”  
  
“You want things to go back to the same old shit, different day?” Percy asks and he carefully lets Credence back onto his feet, but he keeps him against the wall, his hands on Credence’s hips. “Or do you want something better for yourself?”  
  
“You going to ask me to move in with you?” Credence asks with an edge to his tone. “And give me freedom from it all in exchange for feeding on me?”  
  
Percy smiles. “We could do it that way,” he says and chuckles when Credence frowns irritably. “You have to admit it’s better than the life you have now.” He leans in to kiss Credence but Credence turns his head away and Percy only smiles again. “Or I can give you something more. You only need to ask.”  
  
Credence looks at him then and doesn’t know what he feels. Fear, yes, uncertainty and something else, something that isn’t so terrifying. Something that makes him feel like he’d finally be the strong one, when he never has been in all his life. Not even when he drove a stake through Percy’s heart and watched him turn to ash.  
  
He looks into Percy’s eyes and Percy looks back, patient and without expectation.  
  
“Take me home,” Credence says quietly. “Lay me down in your bed and make love to me. Let’s start from there.”  
  
Percy smiles and he kisses Credence then and Credence kisses back, fiercely, clutching at Percy’s back.  
  
It’s not a complete surprise when the church disappears and they are in a dark room lit only by the moonlight behind clouds outside. It’s a high rise apartment with a large bed and Credence will think about the _hows_ later.  
  
For now he takes Percy’s suit in his hands and backs to the bed, until they both fall into it.  
  
It’s gentler here, in the way that Percy holds Credence, the way he rocks into him, even in the way he bites him, the way he caresses Credence’s cheek and brushes his fingers through his hair.  
  
The way he says _love,_ almost like he means it.  
  
When they’re done, Percy is breathing against Credence’s neck and Credence's hands are running up and down his back as he stares at the ceiling and smells the scent of blood.  
  
It’s not disturbing and repulsive anymore.  
  
Credence thinks of Ma’s face, snarling as she belittles him or the satisfaction in her eyes when she holds a belt in her hand.  
  
Chastity’s small, pleased smile whenever he earned a punishment. How she used to smile at him in a different way and laugh when he made faces at her.  
  
Modesty, always so sweet, patting his hand when he didn’t feel well or slinging an arm around his waist these days, grinning at him and telling him that life sucks, but at least she has him.  
  
There’s a lump in his throat as he thinks of that and Percy kisses him, his chin and cheeks, below his eyes and the corners of them, when they grow wet.  
  
Modesty is the only person he will ever miss in his life, if he leaves. He doesn’t have it in him anymore to keep going just for her when it’s destroying him.  
  
He looks at Percy and smiles faintly. “Percy,” he whispers and touches his cheek, “please?”  
  
Percy presses his hand over Credence’s and smiles as he looks into his eyes. “Is that what you want, Credence?”  
  
“Yes,” Credence breathes. “I’m asking you for it, the way you knew I would.”  
  
Percy kisses Credence, slow and unhurried and rests his hand over Credence’s heart, beating strong and sure under it. He pulls away, just a little, and with a slight sting, he heals the last scars on Credence’s shoulder.  
  
The ones Percy gave him are gone now and he did leave more marks on Credence’s body, but in a different way. Credence smiles and clutches at Percy’s back when he’s kissed again, a kiss full of promises.  
  
“It’ll be over soon, love,” Percy says when he pulls back. “All of it will be over.”  
  
Credence nods and there are tears in his eyes again, but they feel like tears of relief. Of freedom, so close, within his reach.  
  
The bite is even more gentle, deep in his artery, and Credence holds onto Percy, closing his eyes and running his fingers through his hair. He doesn’t notice when he grows too weak for it, doesn’t feel his hands falling to the bed, doesn’t feel his heart slowing and doesn’t feel it when it stops beating entirely.  
  
The next time that Credence opens his eyes, and feels something again, he feels sick. The room is dark but the faintest bit of light around a window stings at his eyes and he closes them again. Fingers move through his hair and someone tells him to open his mouth and it’s hard to do, but he manages.  
  
He tastes something bitter and sour, but he swallows it when he’s told to and everything fades.  
  
Credence thinks it happens a few more times, but maybe he’s imagining it. Maybe he’s dead and this is how the afterlife begins. But it doesn’t feel like heaven or hell and his eyes still sting when he opens them, despite so little light in the room.  
  
He feels sluggish and drowsy but he has more strength and moves his hand, feeling silk sheets beneath it. The sound of his fingers against the material is startlingly loud and he stops and furrows his brow.  
  
“It’s alright, love,” a soft voice says behind him.  
  
Percy.  
  
Credence turns, the sheets agitating his strangely sensitive skin, still too loud, and it’s still too bright in here. But Percy is there, sitting on the bed next to him and Credence knows the room is dark, but he sees Percy as clear as day.  
  
“Percy,” Credence whispers, his throat dry and a sour taste in his mouth. “Why do I…?”  
  
“It’ll take another day or two,” Percy says. “And you'll be fine.” His fingers move through Credence’s hair and Credence smells blood. It’s sour, not the usual metallic tang to it and he frowns.  
  
Percy chuckles. “Just a little more,” he says and moves his wrist to his mouth. He bites himself and Credence watches, rather enraptured by the sight.  
  
When Percy offers his arm, Credence takes it and looks at the dark blood and feels it on his lips before he pulls it closer and sucks on the open wounds. It’s not a good taste and yet there’s something intoxicating about it all the same, something that makes him keep drinking it, until Percy pulls away. Credence whines at the loss and Percy chuckles.  
  
“More soon,” he promises. “How do you feel?”  
  
Credence looks at him and around the room, realizing that the light doesn’t hurt much anymore. His hand sliding across the sheets doesn’t make his ears ring and he can push himself up, more strength in him now. He licks his lips, the last bit of Percy’s blood, and looks at him. Realizes what he said was true.  
  
“It’s over,” Credence says softly.  
  
“It’s just beginning,” Percy says and smiles, his eyes so dark.  
  
Credence smiles, wide and with a relief he never fathomed he could feel, and moves his hand to Percy’s cheek, pulling him closer and kissing him.  
  
Just the beginning of forever, Credence knows, and he looks forward to every moment of it.

**Author's Note:**

> I said I was on a feel-good kick too soon I guess lmao probably the darkest thing I've written? I've always wanted to write a darker vampire graves but my other two vampire fics got fluffy before I could stop them! I've been really bummed out the last two weeks cause of continuous health problems and not getting to see my family, so this helped a little to get the angst out. Hope those of you that read it enjoyed it!
> 
> Thanks as always to Erin and my Mom who very bravely read/skimmed this one too lmao
> 
> "Graves totally failed at being a creepy villain 😂😂 lmao smitten ass loser" - Erin, who obliterated me on the spot
> 
> [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/vtforpedro)


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